Attachment therapy

Attachment therapy is a controversial category of alternative child mental health interventions intended to treat attachment disorders. The term generally includes accompanying parenting techniques. Other names or particular techniques include "the Evergreen model", "holding time", "rage-reduction", "compression therapy", "rebirthing", "corrective attachment therapy" and Coercive Restraint Therapy. It is found primarily in the United States, and much of it is centered in about a dozen clinics in Evergreen, Colorado, where Foster Cline, one of the founders, established his clinic in the 1970s. This article describes this particular set of interventions although in clinical literature the term "attachment therapy" is sometimes used loosely to mean any intervention based on attachment theory, particularly outside the US. Attachment therapy as described in this article should not be confused with other schools of therapy which are more empirically based and which aim to address problems stemming from disrupted attachment to caregivers.

Attachment therapy is a treatment used primarily with fostered or adopted children who have behavioral difficulties, sometimes severe, but including disobedience and perceived lack of gratitude or affection for their caregivers. The children's problems are ascribed to an inability to attach to their new parents, because of suppressed rage due to past maltreatment and abandonment. The common form of attachment therapy is holding therapy, in which a child is firmly held (or lain upon) by therapists or parents. Through this process of restraint and confrontation, therapists seek to produce in the child a range of responses such as rage and despair with the goal of achieving catharsis. In theory, when the child's resistance is overcome and the rage is released, the child is reduced to an infantile state in which he or she can be "re-parented" by methods such as cradling, rocking, bottle feeding and enforced eye contact. The aim is to promote attachment with the new caregivers. Control over the children is usually considered essential, and the therapy is often accompanied by parenting techniques which emphasize obedience. These accompanying parenting techniques are based on the belief that a properly attached child should comply with parental demands "fast, snappy and right the first time" and should be "fun to be around". These techniques have been implicated in several child deaths and other harmful effects.

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